5. What work is the Minister doing on land use planning to ensure the best use is made of land in the context of Net Zero Wales? OQ58229

Thank you, Jenny. To meet our net-zero ambitions will require land use change. The majority of land in Wales is used for agriculture. The sustainable farming scheme will incentivise farmers to make best use of their land to deliver economic, social and environmental outcomes through a land sharing approach.

I want to follow up on the questions that both Jayne Bryant and Natasha Asghar have asked, but in relation to growing food for sale. We obviously have to reduce our carbon emissions from food, including the miles that food has to travel. The Sustain report on fringe farming, published earlier this year, highlights the importance of protecting peri-urban land with grade 1 and grade 2 soils for growing food. I'm looking forward to the work that Food Cardiff is doing with Cardiff Council to map exactly who owns which pieces of land on the fringes of Cardiff as well as Newport. I particularly have my eye on the floodplain between Cardiff and Newport, which seems an ideal place for growing food. So, what action will the Welsh Government take to protect fertile peri-urban land on the edge of towns and cities for growing food as part of your ambition for sustainable urban communities? 

I'm very much on board with that, Jenny. We have a national plan system in Wales—a planned system that allows us to have a robust framework for ensuring agricultural land is protected for productive use through 'Planning Policy Wales' and 'Future Wales: the national plan 2040'. 'Planning Policy Wales' seeks to ensure the best use is made for land. For example, it has a clear preference for the use of suitable and sustainable previously developed land for development within existing settlements, it has a strong policy to protect peri-urban areas against development, including urban sprawl, and seeks to conserve the best and most versatile agricultural land as a finite resource for the future. It requires local planning authorities to undertake a search sequence when preparing local development plans to prioritise the allocation of suitable and sustainable sites. Best and most versatile agricultural land, grades 1, 2 and 3A, should only be developed if there is what's called 'an overriding need'. That's a legal term; it's a very high bar. It doesn't mean 'just because you can't think of anywhere better'; they have to show that no other suitable land is available before that's permitted to that overriding need.

We've also got a long-term strategy to promote a dietary shift and encourage Welsh consumers to eat a healthier, more sustainable food source. While we want to encourage people to buy high-quality, local Welsh produce, we can work with our food production sector to ensure it's produced in a truly sustainable manner and avoid simply offshoring emissions to other countries. I had a very good meeting with the Country Land and Business Association very recently where we discussed the various ways, for example, that you could produce Welsh breed cattle without importing any kind of soy produce, reducing not only the food miles if you buy and eat that meat, but the food miles to produce it in the first place. So, we're doing a very good piece of work with my colleague Lesley Griffiths on that while protecting the peri-urban land. And then, in conjunction with a conversation with Jayne and with Natasha, making sure that all available land is used to bring particularly urban populations back into touch with how food is grown and where it's best produced.

Minister, the 'Net Zero Wales Carbon Budget 2' states that:

'Meeting net zero will require using more timber in sectors such as construction to replace currently high energy manufacture materials such as steel and concrete.' and also that this Government intends to develop a new timber industrial strategy

'to develop a wood economy and encourage greater use of timber in construction.'

But my concern is none of this is particularly transparent in terms of how the carbon footprint of timber is calculated. It suggests that timber use in construction is somehow carbon free, when, in fact, it is manufactured product that needs energy inputs for harvesting and transportation, and then there is the carbon released from soil disturbance. It then needs to be processed using energy-intensive chemical preservatives and glues. And none of this takes account of the life cycle of carbon during the in-use phase of the building. Minister, I was disappointed in your response to my written question regarding carbon emissions from soil, because it highlighted the insufficient evidence there is to support this Government's plan going forward. Indeed, by the time your timber industry strategy even begins to come to fruition in 40 to 50 years' time, the concrete industry will already be completely decarbonised. With this in mind, Minister, what consideration has this Government given to measuring the potential of the concrete industry in the carbon sequestration process? And will the Minister agree to meet with me and representatives of the industry to discuss how concrete can play an important part in the decarbonisation of Wales? Thank you.

So, obviously, there's a complex series of calculations around carbon and carbon sequestration for a variety of different products. I can't pretend to be an expert in that, but we have a number of people advising us, including on the deep-dive panels and so on, who are. One of the things that we want to do is come, especially for soil, to an agreement with farmers for how they measure carbon on their land, for example, and their carbon emissions. So, we have a piece of work going on across the Government on agreeing a set of standards and standard measurement tools in order to do just that. We're very pleased to work with any industry in Wales that wants to decarbonise, and we're more than happy to meet you with any industry that wants to do that. For example, we've had a number of beneficial conversations with the steel industry about their decarbonisation journey, and I'm more than happy to do that for any industry in Wales that wants to go on that journey.   

With over three quarters of all Welsh land being comprised of farmland, it's important that we utilise the products from this land on our journey to net zero. There is no product more natural than sheep's wool. Unfortunately, the price of a fleece of wool sits at around 20p—a price that is dwarfed by the £1.40 it costs to shear. I know that the Welsh Government pledged to use more wool in public buildings back in 2020, but we need to do more. The Irish Farmers Association called on the Irish Government to create incentives to ensure that domestic wool became the insulation of choice across their country. Would the Welsh Government be supportive of a scheme like this in Wales? And with the potential mammoth task of retrofitting the Welsh housing stock to be more energy efficient, will the Welsh Government explore the use of domestic wool as insulation in such a retrofitting programme to support our farmers and continue our journey to net zero?

Yes. The very short answer to that is 'yes'. It's very much part of the optimised retrofit programme and the innovative housing programme. What those programmes do is they take a whole series of products and we build housing—new housing for the IHP and retrofitted housing for the ORP programme—and then we test out what the product has claimed against what it actually performs like. As I’ve said a number of times in this Chamber, we’re two years into the ORP, whereas five, I think I’m right in saying—maybe six—into the IHP programme, and that means we’ve got quite a lot of very good empirical data about how various types of things perform in conjunction with others. So, for example, for sheep’s wool, does that perform well sandwiched between two plasterboard walls, or two straw walls, or—? All that kind of thing. So, the programme is quite exhaustive. I’d encourage any Member who hasn’t visited one of the sites to do so. You’ll be given a comprehensive tour of the various types of tech. I visited one down in my colleague Mike Hedges’s constituency only yesterday, and it’s completely fascinating to see the data coming back. As a result of that, of course we will use that to increase the supply chains, help commercialise the product, develop a marketing strategy and get it into the main stream, as that’s the whole purpose of the programme.